Jake
As Mueller’s investigation into foreign interference during the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s role in it heats up, the president seems increasingly unhinged. It seems like each day brings a fresh new anti-Mueller tirade and more evidence of Trump’s reliance on Russia for help securing the presidency. Today he lashed out at his former attorney Michael Cohen for flipping on him and praised his “dirty tricks” bag man Roger Stone for refusing to testify. He may have committed some more crimes in the process.
President Trump spent the morning having another one of his increasingly frequent public meltdowns over the Mueller investigation.
“Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.” You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
Trump also let everyone know he thinks witnesses who admitted to criminal activity in the course of implicating him should be punished.
….his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
He’s also recommending his former personal attorney go to jail for the crimes they both allegedly committed, which is pretty extraordinary. Also, who is “Scott Free” and why can’t our president figure out proper capitalization?
As though that weren’t enough to send the message to would-be Mueller cooperators, he then identified the “proper” way to respond to a Mueller subpoena—by obstructing justice.
“I will never testify against Trump.” This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about “President Trump.” Nice to know that some people still have “guts!”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
Got that? Testifying under oath against Trump = bad. Refusing to testify under oath = good and gutsy. Unfortunately, Mueller no doubt has loads of evidence to verify any statements made by Cohen and Manafort. Mueller recently recommended Manafort be sentenced for continuing to make false statements after he signed a cooperation agreement. Many people speculated Manafort’s bizarre reversal was a desperate attempt to secure a pardon from Trump, and the fact that Manafort shared information with Trump’s legal team after agreeing to cooperate with the prosecution certainly suggests as much.
Trump then tried to recast Mueller (again) as some kind of rogue Democratic operative, rather than the lifelong Republican he actually is.
Bob Mueller (who is a much different man than people think) and his out of control band of Angry Democrats, don’t want the truth, they only want lies. The truth is very bad for their mission!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
Unfortunately, Trump may have committed yet another crime in posting his little tantrum—witness tampering:
Can a lawyer explain how the Roger Stone tweet in particular is not obstruction of justice? pic.twitter.com/azPnpUbiZJ
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 3, 2018
By dangling pardons in front of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone in exchange for their silence, Trump seems to be obstructing justice yet again by trying to prevent witnesses from testifying against him.
People noticed Trump’s brazen broad-daylight attempt to silence witnesses and reward his alleged co-conspirators:
Highest elected official in the country appears to be trying to interfere in the sentencing of former lawyer who has implicated the president in guilty pleas. https://t.co/5RJWg07M1l
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 3, 2018
Hey crimes on twitter are still crimes right?
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) December 3, 2018
hey, there are only 56.1 million witnesses https://t.co/0gF7vyOw92
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 3, 2018
Kellyanne Conway’s husband George just straight-up tweeted the relevant section of the U.S. Code Trump’s tweet may have violated:
File under “18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512” https://t.co/e4ZGVn1kJi
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) December 3, 2018
As journalist Julian Sanchez pointed out, this public law-breaking could be part of a strategy by Trump to hide his shady dealings in plain sight:
This is enough of a pattern that it seems like a strategy. Trump has realized he can get away with doing things by public broadcast (“Russia, if you’re listening…”) that would be more clearly scandalous/criminal if done by private communication. https://t.co/3cqZVdZE7i
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 3, 2018
If he’d had Manafort or Cohen pass along “Russia if you’re listening,” followed immediately by the attack on HRC’s office email, nobody but Hannity would doubt that’s a crime. When he does it right out in the open, it’s just a little joke.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 3, 2018
When he privately tells Comey he wants him to let Flynn go, that’s a huge scandal. When he openly and repeatedly denounces prosecution of his friends & calls for jail for his foes, hey, that’s just opining.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 3, 2018
We don’t know for certain if it was deliberate in that first case—the more aware he was at the time of Russia’s efforts on his behalf, the less plausible “joke” looks—but he’s surely noticed by this point that backlash to the public stuff is increasingly short-lived.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 3, 2018
Regardless, it’s still most likely still a crime and it’s definitely an unethical abuse of office.